Thursday, September 10, 2009

My First Stranger

My first official project encounter occured on my way home today. I stopped by John's grocery to pick up a couple staples that we were running low on, and as I was leaving I met Keith.

(on a side note, I'm not sure what to do about names on here, currently I've decided to go with just using the first name, if I learn it in the course of my conversation, and use things like "waiting in line guy" or "lost japanese couple" if I don't.)

So as I left the store I bumped into Keith, he was holding a stack of fliers and asked if I was a reader. I answered in the affirmative, as I am in fact one of the biggest book worms alive, and he handed me a flier. It turned out that Keith had written a book that had just come out. Not only that, but he is currently working with a screen writer to get it made into a movie. Also, he has another book coming out in a year or so. We talked about his issues with the book industry, he has changed agents twice and is working with a new publishing house on his second book.

The conversation lasted about ten minutes, on the steps of John's grocery, with my groceries slowly warming in the afternoon sun.

It was this conversation that convinced me once and for all that this project might actually be something that I can do. True he was going into John's to get them to put up one of his fliers, and perhaps I was just a target for his marketing abilities, but he seemed like a genuinely cool guy, and I might even try to hunt down his book and give it a read. Who knows, maybe it will be a huge success as a movie, and then I will have met some one who turned famous.

You can never know, and that is why you should always talk to strangers